Main RMI Number
408-554-4960
SCU - St. Joseph's Hall
Room # 108
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Retail Management Institute Newsletter -Winter '02
R e t a i l  S p e a k e r s o n C a m p u s
Retail Management Institute Graduate Shares Her Experiences At Williams-Sonoma
By Kelly Warns ‘02
Angela Caltagirone, Marketing Services Manager, Willims-Sonoma in San Francisco speaks with Seniors in the Retail Senior Seminar. |
Angela Caltagirone, Retail Management Institute class of ’92, visited the senior seminar class to talk about her experiences as the Manager of Marketing Services at Williams-Sonoma. Caltagirone spoke to us about her days at Santa Clara and about how her internship experience at The Good Guys, sparked her interest in direct marketing and the retail industry. She started working in the marketing department at Williams-Sonoma right after graduation, when it was only six people strong and doing $200 million in sales. Things have changed dramatically for both her and the corporation, which now has over 40 people in the marketing department and generates $2 billion in annual sales.
Over the last ten years, Williams-Sonoma’s marketing strategy has undergone many changes. They have a huge retail database, which they have gained through the large dissemination of their catalogs, and work on constantly growing and updating it through list management sales and new customer acquisition. Williams-Sonoma’s most common customer is 35-45 years old, female, with household income over $125,000 a year. Two years ago Williams-Sonoma began doing electronic direct marketing (EDM) or email campaigns and this is now what Caltagirone spends most of her time developing.
The Marketing Services department works on e-commerce and direct marketing for all of the five brands – Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Chambers and Hold Everything. This means that her department is responsible for sending out targeted, relevant emails to customers of all five brands. The main purpose of EDM is to drive incremental sales to all channels and to use the most cohesive strategy to build strong customer brand loyalty. The retail stores, catalog, and web site of Williams-Sonoma are all cross-functional and the company works to improve this through all of its strategies. The email campaigns have helped to improve the cross-functionality of these channels as well as helped customer service and lowered call center costs.
Caltagirone was very informative and inspiring. The seniors in the seminar gained a unique insight into Williams-Sonoma’s marketing strategies and the cutting edge world of direct marketing. She gave us ideas about possible career paths to explore as we quickly approach graduation. Overall, Caltagirone gave us an inside look of the direct marketing world of Williams-Sonoma and opened our eyes to the importance of marketing in the retail industry.
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RMI Newsletter
